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Arts & the Internet: Quick, more subsidies!

The annual budgets for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are down to about $155 million each. And that is just dreadful, The New York Times editorialized on Monday.

It is dreadful because “the endowments are essential to art and enlightenment all across the country,” the Times opined.

Being professional writers for the nation’s most prestigious newspaper, the editors surely know that “essential” is a synonym of both “indispensable” and “necessary.” The editorial asserted that “art and enlightenment” could not happen in the United States of America without direct financial support from the federal government.

One wonders how our nation managed to get itself founded upon enlightenment ideals 189 years before the National Endowment for the Humanities was created by Congress in a building decorated with many works of art produced during the 189 years before that same Congress established the National Endowment for the Arts. It is a mystery.

The day before that editorial, the Times reported that Obama administration officials were worried that the government does not have enough money for programs to expand Internet access. That a mere 98 percent of Americans have broadband Internet access apparently is a crisis in need of ongoing federal remediation.

No matter how bad the economy, how high the unemployment rate, how staggering the national debt, there is no good thing that liberals will not demand be subsidized by the state, with as much money as possible, forever.